FOREST FIRES GROW WORSE IN NORTH AMERICA

Grey River Argus, 25 August 1949, Page 5

FOREST FIRES GROW WORSE IN NORTH AMERICA

x NEW YORK, August 23. The forest fire front spread to-day to the State of Maine, where drought has mdae the mountain timber explosively dry. Seven other States and the provinces of Ontario and Quebec in Canada are battling with fires in rich timberlands. Officials said that Maine was last approaching the extreme drought conditions of 1947 when forest fires cost 16 lives and 30,000,000 dollars m damage. . no (Rec. 11.25). NEW YORK, Aug. 23. Fast-moving forest fires are now raging, out >of control, all the way from Quebec, in Canada, to Idaho. Whipped by high winds the fires are leaping across the roads and the rivers. They are devouring farm houses and rich woodlands, and are killing the wild life in their path.

More than 1500 acres of Idaho’s Payette National Forest are ablaze. These fires are still spreading, and are out of control. A report from Rapid City, in south Dakota, said that a raging fire was sweeping out of control through the Blackhills National Forest, about 2o miles north-west of the city. Maine, which was swept by disastrous fires in 1947, is now facing the possibility of a similar tragedy, as more than a dozen fires blaze unchecked in the richly wooded areas. In all, two hundred and thirty forest fires are raging in Quebec and Ontario, in Canada. A number of villages along the south shore of the St. Laurence River, 40 miles from Quebec, are in grave danger. An Army of fire-fighters in Quebec Province last night turned a five mile, front away from the Laurentian mountain villages of Terrebonne Heights and Pinecourt, from which hundreds of residents had been evacuated. Officials in San Diago County, California to-day took emergency control action when the ninth fire broke out. Winds of 40 miles an hour raced across Idaho, but the .fire-fighters reported that they were beginning to gain against the blaze in Hell’s Canyon gorge of Snake River and in the Yellowstone National Park. Thirty-five thousand acres of America’s richest timberlands were ablaze this morning. LONDON, August 23. The United Press Paris correspondent reports that M. Louis Giraudeaux. the Mayor of Saucats, near 1 Bordeaux, who died in trying to save I people who had been trapped by the forest fires last Saturday, has been posthumously awarded the Legion of Honour.

N.Z. NEED OF IMMIGRANTS IN QUICK TIME P.A. WELLINGTON, Aug 24. An immigration policy that would bring into New Zealand 140,000 persons in the next three years was adopted in outline by the, conference on population to-day. The conference also decided to ask for a Royal Commission on population and immigration. A delegation will wait on the Government after the General Election. The conference was called bv the Dominion Settlement and Population Association. The resolution on immigration was moved b v the president of the New Zeaalnd Returned Services' Association (Major-General Sir Howard Kippenberger) and seconded bv the president of the Dominion Settlement and Population Association (Mr A. Leigh Hunt). It said:—

Tn order to contribute to national security and the welfare and prosperity of the Dominion, this conference of delegates from organisations having a total membership of 273 090 urges the adoption of a vigorous inimigration policy with the objective of the introduction of the absolute maximum of new settlors, each year.” Skilled and unskilled workers family groups, British children and displaced persons were included in categories. At least 10,000 were sought for 1950, 50,000 for 1951, and 80,000 for 1952.